The Crusaders

The Crusaders by Roger Pocock (1901)

The Crusaders by Roger Pocock draws on the memoirs of De Joinville to recount the sixth crusade undertaken by the saintly French king, Saint Louis, in the mid-thirteenth century. The narrative opens with an account of how Saint Louis, lying near death and attended by two quarrelling nurses, vowed upon the cross to deliver the Holy Land, then recovered and summoned his barons to war. Among those who answered the call was the young Lord of Joinville, seneschal of Champagne, a cheerful man of modest means who pawned his lands to equip himself with two knights-banneret, nine knights, their men-at-arms, and servants. He shared the cost of a ship from Marseilles and arrived in Cyprus with almost nothing left, surviving financially only because the king gave him a staff appointment worth eight hundred pounds a year. Saint Louis is portrayed as a holy and courageous man but a thoroughly incompetent general. Rather than striking at Jerusalem by surprise, he chose to raid Egypt, giving the soldan of Babylon the Less, that is Cairo, ample time to prepare. The French took Damietta after a battle on the beach, but Saint Louis mismanaged his supplies while the Saracens sent their ships to intercept French provisions moving toward the front. The army pressed inland against a weakened enemy whose leader had been poisoned, but encountered a canal that had to be bridged. The enemy undermined the ground before the bridgehead so the French could not land, and many knights, weighed down by armour, drowned attempting to cross. Joinville's party found a dry ford upstream and charged into the evacuated enemy camp, where they were immediately set upon by thousands of Turkish horsemen. The fighting that followed is described through Joinville's own words, which Pocock quotes directly. Joinville was knocked from his horse, trampled, and had his shield torn from his neck. His small party took shelter against the wall of a ruined house, with several knights badly wounded, including one whose nose was cut so that it fell over his lips, and another whose wound bled as freely as from the bung hole of a cask. Too badly wounded himself to fight, Joinville held the horses while Turks on the roof prodded down with their lances. Relief came first from Anjou and then from the king with his main army, but the Christian force was slowly driven back toward the river. Joinville, remounted, held a small bridge across a tributary for hours, covering the retreat of French detachments. The Count of Soissons, in the thick of the danger, jested that the two of them would yet talk of that day in ladies' chambers. The king's own position grew desperate, and Joinville made him remove his helmet and lent him a steel cap so he could breathe. News came that the king's brother, the Count of Artois, was dead. The king wept but gave thanks to God. That night the captured camp was attacked again, forcing the wounded knights to pull chain mail back over their injuries. Three days later came a full assault by the Saracen army, from which Joinville's party was mercifully spared. The army lay in its diseased camp for weeks while hundreds died of scurvy, feeding on eels and foul water from the canal filled with the bodies of the dead. The surgeons' patients cried out like women. An attempted retreat by river failed; the small galleys were captured one by one, the king was taken prisoner, the sick were killed, the wealthy held for ransom, and the poor sold into slavery. Saint Louis, himself dying of dysentery and scurvy and threatened with torture, bargained patiently with the soldan for the release of his people. When the soldan was murdered by his own emirs, the king simply continued negotiating with the murderers. He gave Damietta as his own ransom and paid the royal treasure for his knights. When the counting of the ransom fell thirty thousand livres short, Joinville, still weak and ragged from captivity, went to the Knights Templars and by sheer force of will extracted the sum from their treasury, threatening to break the chest open with an axe. He then shouted triumphantly to the king that he was well furnished, and the king received him joyfully. Years of hard campaigning in Palestine followed. Saint Louis was once invited to visit Jerusalem as a pilgrim, but mindful of Richard the Lion-Hearted, who had wept rather than look on a city he could not deliver, Louis likewise turned away broken-hearted. A quieter episode records the king remarking to Joinville that in five years he had never spoken openly of the queen or his children, and finding it unseemly to be so distant from one's family. On the voyage home an accidental fire broke out in the queen's cabin at night; she extinguished it herself, and Joinville kept silent about the incident until the king told the story himself the next morning, then charged Joinville with inspecting all fires each night before either of them slept. On returning to France the king brought peace and prosperity to his kingdom. In failing health he was persuaded to undertake another crusade, this time in Africa. Joinville, now very old and angry at the decision, carried the weakened king in his arms to the abbey of the Franciscans. Saint Louis went to his death in Tunis, described as a bungling soldier but a saint on a throne and the greatest sovereign France had known. Long afterward the old king appeared to Joinville in a dream, marvelously joyous, laughing and declaring he had no wish to leave. It was at the age of eighty-five that Joinville wrote his memoirs, still as blithe as a boy.

By Roger Pocock · First published 1901 · Genre: Historical Fiction, Biography, Military History · 3,585 words

First lines

A. D. 1248

In the seventh century of the reign of Our Lord Christ, arose the Prophet Mahomet. To his followers he generously gave Heaven, and as much of the earth as they could get, so the true believers made haste to occupy goodly and fruitful possessions of Christian powers, including the Holy Land. The owners were useful as slaves.

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historical fiction · adventure · military history · medieval period · crusades · religious conflict · warfare · exploration · european history · middle east · knights · journeys

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